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The engineer for the City of Fairbanks, Alaska recently conducted an energy audit and found that the cities' 2646 street lights cost $535,000 to operate each year. The number was staggering, considering that the communities total electric bill was $880,000. Now the city engineer and other city officials are studying the situation, and trying to determine what can be done to reduce the energy costs.

We frequently help our customers analyze the cost savings that can be achieved by switching to LED lights, but we've never written about how to calculate the exact savings one can expect, by replacing their old incandescent Christmas lights with LED lights. The calculations to determine the cost savings are not very complicated, but just make sure you have a calculator handy (...

We have received a fairly steady set of inquires about powering LED Christmas lights with DC power, so I decided it was time to do some research, and provide some information to our users. As a starting point, most Christmas light sets are wired for standard household AC, or alternating current. This means that they cannot be powered with DC, or direct current, without some modification. However, there are some sets of LED Christmas lights that are battery...

Unlike traditional incandescent lighting technology, LED lights are not constantly on. That is, all LEDs flicker or turn on and off at a very high rate of speed. This is one of the reasons that they are so much more efficient, but it also can cause some undesirable effects in the appearance of the lights. Currently, there are two different types of LED Christmas tree lights on the market: 1) full wave (rectified); and 2) half wave (non-rectified).

I read an editorial this afternoon in the Barrie Examiner from Ontario, Candada entitled "Earth Hour Meaningless." I probably wouldn't have known about Earth Hour if Google hadn't decided to support it and turn it's home page black. Earth Hour was last night and willing participants were supposed to turn out the lights from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. top raise awareness of conservation and global climate change.

Anyone who has Googled Christmas lights has likely run across Komar.org. This is the ultimate interactive Christmas light display site. Alek, the mastermind behind this outrageous display, has it configured so it is entirely computer controlled and visitors to the site can actually control the Christmas lights on his house from the web. Pretty cool concept...

Green-blog.org is a multi-author blog site and forum that provides useful information and interesting discussion about environmental issues. The site is developing a strong and dedicated user base who provide lots of great content. The site just announced a tree planting and membership drive program.

It still surprises me that there are groups, forums, and organizations online for just about every possible type of interest one could imagine. Recently I was looking around for cool websites about holiday lighting displays and found a great site I hadn't come across before. ChristmasLightsCommunity.com is a national organization of people who share the hobby of Christmas light decorating.

LED Christmas lights are much more durable than standard incandescent Christmas lights. However, holiday lights using LEDs are still powered by electricity and therefore are equally susceptible to malfunction caused by moisture or water infiltration. Moisture and water infiltration is the most common source of failure in LED holiday lights. Obviously, this type of malfunction is most common on exterior installations. Thus, it is important to take certain steps to minimize the chances for water and moisture to infiltrate your light installation.

The concept, or perception, that a symbol must only have one meaning to all people is nonsensical. However, this phenomenon is very common. Take the modern Christmas tree for example. A Christmas tree is simply any variety of evergreen tree, that is cut and placed in the home during the winter holidays. Or is it? Some argue it is a symbol of Christianity. Others argue it is a symbol of heathen pagans. Some say the evergreen tree violates basic constitutional principles.